old hair. She is drowning in

what is over, gone. Each birth

day she remembers those no

longer left to send gifts. Her

best present this last birthday

was words from a reporter that

the dead lover who died to her

longer ago than she knew him,

told even his wife how much

he loved her, vague enough for

her to read a lifetime together

in, a ghost in itself. The woman

in love with the dead surrounds

herself with photographs of what

never was, camouflaged on

her freezer. When she reads,

"Under Antarctica Ice, Bacteria

Redefines Life on The Edge,"

she thinks of being in lightless,

fishless water in the only lakes

on earth perpetually covered

with ice, too cold to open or move.

She thinks of how they found little

oases inside the ice covers where

for 150 days each summer the ice

softens enough that tiny pockets of

liquid water form like what melted in

her before, one after another, those

who mattered left fast. Life on the

edges. Strangers in a strange place

getting by. Something thriving in

places you'd assume nothing could

survive. She thinks of the dash to

parking lots before the night shift,

of the phone calls searing any stillness.

A little light from lips melting ice on

top of what was lower, deeper, re-froze,

something still alive, to her amazement.

When she finds a scrap of paper,

handwriting that jolts, a face in

the drawer, she's distracted, she's

lost in loss. She's so cold but she

wants you on hold where she can

thaw a little like chicken or coffee

beans she'll grind later. She wants

to make you love the cold, the quiet,

wants to listen with ear plugs so she

can make up words she can't hear.

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